The Metal Monster Read online

  CHAPTER XXII. THE ENSORCELLED CHAMBER

  "Goodwin!" Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keephis fear out of his voice. "Goodwin--this isn't the way to get out.We're going up--farther away all the time from the--the gates!"

  "What can we do?" My anxiety was no less than his, but my realization ofour helplessness was complete.

  "If we only knew how to talk to these Things," he said. "If we couldonly have let the Disk know we wanted to get out--damn it, Goodwin, itwould have helped us."

  Grotesque as the idea sounded, I felt that he spoke the truth. TheEmperor meant no harm to us; in fact in speeding us away I was not atall sure that he had not deliberately wished us well--there was thatabout the Keeper--

  Still up we sped along the shaft. I knew we must now be above the levelof the valley.

  "We've got to get back to Ruth! Goodwin--NIGHT! And what may haveHAPPENED to her?"

  "Drake, boy"--I dropped into his own colloquialism--"we're up againstit. We can't help it. And remember--she's there in Norhala's home. Idon't believe, I honestly don't believe, Dick, that there's any dangeras long as she remains there. And Ventnor ties her fast."

  "That's true," he said, more hopefully. "That's true--and probablyNorhala is with her by now."

  "I don't doubt it," I said cheerfully. An idea came to me--I halfbelieved it myself. "And another thing. There's not an action herethat's purposeless. We're being driven on by the command of that Thingwe call the Metal Emperor. It means us no harm. Maybe--maybe this IS theway out."

  "Maybe so," he shook his head doubtfully. "But I'm not sure. Maybe thatlong push was just to get us away from THERE. And it strikes me that theimpulse has begun to weaken. We're not going anywhere near as fast as wewere."

  I had not realized it, but our speed was slackening. I lookedback--hundreds of feet behind us fell the slide. An unpleasant chillwent through me--should the magnetic grip upon us relax, withdraw,nothing could stop us from falling back along that incline to be brokenlike eggs at its end; that our breaths would be snuffed out by theterrific descent long before we reached that end was scant comfort.

  "There are other passages opening up along this shaft," Drake said."I'm not for trusting the Emperor too far--he has other things on hismetallic mind, you know. The next one we get to, let's try to slipinto--if we can."

  I had noticed; there had been openings along the ascending shaft;corridors running apparently transversely to its angled way.

  Slower and slower became our pace. A hundred yards above I glimpsed oneof the apertures. Could we reach it? Slower and slower we arose. Now thegap was but a yard off--but we were motionless--were tottering!

  Drake's arms wrapped round me. With a tremendous effort he hurled meinto the portal. I dropped at its edge, writhed swiftly around, saw himslipping, slipping down--thrust my hands out to him.

  He caught them. There came a wrench that tortured my arm sockets asthough racked. But he held!

  Slowly--I writhed back into the passage, dragging up his almost deadweight. His head appeared, his shoulders; there was a convulsion of thelong body and he lay before me.

  For a minute or two we lay, flat upon our backs resting. I sat up. Thepassage was broad, silent; apparently as endless as that from which wehad just escaped.

  Along it, above us, under us, the crystalline eyes were dim. It showedno sign of movement--yet had it done so there was nothing we could dosave drop down the annihilating slant. Drake arose.

  "I'm hungry," he said, "and I'm thirsty. I move that we eat and drinkand approximately be merry."

  He slung aside the haversack. From it we took food; from the canteenswe drank. We did not talk. Each knew what the other was thinking;infrequently, and thank the eternal law that some call God for that,come crises in which speech seems not only petty but when against it themind rebels as a nauseous thing.

  This was such a time. At last I drew myself to my feet.

  "Let's be going," I said.

  The corridor stretched straight before us; along it we paced. How far wewalked I do not know; mile upon mile, it seemed. It broadened abruptlyinto a vast hall.

  And this hall was filled with the Metal Hordes--was a gigantic workshopof them. In every shape, in every form, they seethed and toiled aboutit. Upon its floor were heaps of shining ores, mounds of flashing gems,piles of ingots, metallic and crystalline. High and low throughoutflamed the egg-shaped incandescences; floating furnaces both great andsmall.

  Before one of these forges, close to us, stood a Metal Thing. Its bodywas a twelve-foot column of smaller cubes. Upon the top was a hollowsquare formed of even lesser blocks--blocks hardly larger than theLittle Things themselves. In the center of the open rectangle wasanother shaft, its top a two-foot square plate formed of a single cube.

  From the sides of the hollow square sprang long arms of spheres, eachtipped by a tetrahedron. They moved freely, slipping about upon theircurved points of contact and like a dozen little thinking hammers,the pyramid points at their ends beat down upon as many thimble shapedobjects which they thrust alternately into the unwinking brazier thenlaid upon the central block to shape.

  A goblin workman the Thing seemed, standing there, so intent upon and sobusy with its forgings.

  There were scores of these animate machines; they paid no slightestheed to us as we slipped by them, clinging as closely to the wall of theimmense workshop as we could.

  We passed a company of other Shapes which stood two by two and closetogether, their tops wide spinning wheels through which the tendrilsof an opened globe fed translucent, colorless ingots--the substance itseemed to me of which Norhala's shadowy walls were made, the crystal ofwhich the bars that built out the base of the Cones were formed.

  The ingots passed between the whirling faces; emerged from them asslender, long cylinders; were seized as they slipped down by a crouchingblock, whose place as it glided away was instantly taken by another. Inmany bewildering forms, intent upon unknown activities directed towardunguessable ends, the composite, animate mechanisms labored. And all theplace was filled with a goblin bustle, trollish racketings, ringing ofgnomish anvils, clanging of kobold forges--a clamorous cavern filledwith metal Nibelungens.

  We came to the opening of another passage, a doorway piercing the wallsof the workshop. Its incline, though steep, was not dangerous.

  Into it we stepped; climbed onward it seemed interminably. Far aheadof us at last appeared the outline of its further entrance, silhouettedagainst and filled with a brighter luminosity. We drew near; stoppedcautiously at its threshold, peering out.

  Well it was that we had hesitated. Before us was open space--an abyss inthe body of the Metal Monster.

  The corridor opened into it like a window. Thrusting out our heads,we saw an unbroken wall both above and below. Half a mile away wasits opposite side. Over this pit was a misty sky and not more than athousand feet above and black against the heavens was the lip of it--thecornices of this chasm within the City.

  Far, far beneath us we watched the Hordes throw themselves across theabyss in webs of curving arches and girder-straight bridges; giganticwe knew these spans must be yet dwarfed to slender footways bydistance. Over them moved hurrying companies; from them came flashings,glitterings--prismatic, sun golden; plutonic scarlets, molten blues;javelins of colored light piercing upward from unfolded cubes and globesand pyramids crossing them or from busy bearers of the shining fruits ofthe mysterious workshops.

  And as they passed the bridges swung up, coiled and thrust themselvesfrom sight through openings that closed behind them. Ever, as theypassed, close on their going whipped out other spans so that alwaysacross that abyss a sentient, shifting web was hung.

  We drew back, stared into each other's white face. Panic swept throughme, in quick, alternate pulse of ice and fire. For crushingly, no longerto be denied, came certainty that we were lost within the mazes of thisincredible City--lost in the body of the Metal Monster which that Citywas. There was a sick despair in my heart as we t
urned and slowly madeour way back along the sloping corridor.

  A hundred yards, perhaps, we had gone in silence before we stopped,gazing stupidly at an opening in the wall beside us. The portal had notbeen there when we had passed--of that I was certain.

  "It's opened since we went by," whispered Drake.

  We peered through it. The passage was narrow; its pave led downward.For a moment we hesitated, the same foreboding in both our minds. Andyet--among the perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we? Therecould be no more danger there than here.

  Both ways were--ALIVE, both obedient to impulses over which we hadno more control and no more way of predetermining than mice in somecomplex, man-made trap. Furthermore, this shaft also ran downward, andalthough its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quicklytoward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape intothe outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through whichwe had come.

  We knew that to retrace our steps now would but take us back to theforges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waitingfor us there.

  We stepped into this opened way. For a little distance it ranstraightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distancemore we climbed. Then suddenly, not a hundred yards from us, gushed outa flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glimmerings androsy shadows of light.

  It was as though a door had opened into some world of luminescence. Fromit the lambent torrent poured; billowed down upon us. In its wakecame music--if music the mighty harmonies, the sonorous chords, thecrystalline themes and the linked chaplet of notes that were likespiralings of tiny golden star bells could be named.

  Toward source of light and sound we moved, nor could we have halted norwithdrawn had we willed; the radiance drew us to it as the sun the waterdrop, and irresistibly the sweet, unearthly music called. Closer wecame--it was a narrow alcove from which sound and light poured--into itwe crept--and went no further.

  We peered into a vast and columnless vault, a limitless temple of light.High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tendersuns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent,jubilant, they flamed--orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of AlShiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbsrosy white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsingopalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring,crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singingrays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes amorous; orbsborn of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that werethe tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fire.

  They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded inradiant choral patterns, in linked harmonies of light. And as theydanced their gay rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk openbeneath them. Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and crossleaped and pulsed and danced to the same bright rhythm.

  We sought the source of the music--a tremendous thing of shimmeringcrystal pipes like some colossal organ. Out of the radiance around itgreat flames gathered, shook into sight with streamings and pennonings,in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and mergedwithin them.

  And as the pipes drank them the flames changed into sound!

  Throbbing bass viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfalland torrents--these had been flames of emerald; flaming trumpetings ofdesire that had been great streamers of scarlet--rose flames that haddissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that meltedinto silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted intomelodies; chameleon harmonies to which the strange suns danced.

  And now I saw--realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, witha sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelledchamber.

  Within every pulsing rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk,from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and from every rayed purplepetaling of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star,luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them.

  The Metal Babes building like crystals from hearts of radiance beneaththe play of jocund orbs!

  Incredible blossomings of crystal and of metal whose lullabies andcradle songs were singing symphonies of flame.

  It was the birth chamber of the City!

  The womb of the Metal Monster!

  Abruptly the walls of the niche sparkled out, the glittering eye pointsregarding us with a most disquieting suggestion of sentinels who,slumbering, had been caught unaware, and now awakening challenged us.Swiftly the niche closed--so swiftly that barely had we time to springover its threshold into the corridor.

  The corridor was awake--alive!

  The power darted out; gripped us. Up it swept us and on. Far away asquare of light appeared, grew quickly larger. Framed in it was theamethystine burning of the great ring that girdled the encirclingcliffs.

  I turned my head--behind us the corridor was closing!

  Now the opening was so close that through it I could see the vastpanorama of the valley. The wall behind us touched us; pushed us on.We thrust ourselves against it, despairingly. As well might flies havetried to press back a moving mountain.

  Resistingly, inexorably we were pressed forward. Now we cowered within ayard-deep niche; now we trembled upon a foot-wide ledge.

  Shuddering, gasping, we glared down the sheer drop of the City's wall.The smooth and glimmering scarp fell thousands of feet straight to thevalley floor. And there were no merciful mists to hide what awaited usthere; no mists anywhere. In that brief, agonized glance every detail ofthe Pit was disclosed with an abnormal clarity.

  We tottered on the brink. The ledge melted.

  Down, down we plunged, locked in each other's arms, hurtling to theshattering death so far below!